Below the fold of democracy: Post-threat journalism and the everyday restructuring of newswork in Mindanao

Although threats against journalists are commonly understood as discrete acts of intimidation, their enduring role in restructuring everyday newswork remains under-theorized. This article introduces the concept of post-threat journalism to explain how intimidation persists as an ambient structuring condition that reorganizes journalistic practice long after the initial threat. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 12 journalists in Mindanao, the Philippines, the study shows that threats do not simply silence reporting but reshape how journalism is lived and sustained. Journalists adapt through collateral risk management involving family protection, continuous anticipatory vigilance, editorial self-governance, and economic improvisation. These adaptations enable journalism to continue, but in structurally altered forms governed by individualized survival strategies rather than institutional protection. Conceptually, the study advances existing frameworks by demonstrating that threat operates not only as an episodic disruption but as an enduring force that restructures journalism as labor, practice, and lived experience. Empirically, it reveals how press freedom gradually erodes not only through overt repression but through the normalization of vulnerability and anticipatory restraint embedded in routine newswork.